AMD and Alibaba join forces for AMD-powered cloud services

AMD and Alibaba have formed a strategic partnership to offer a more robust Alibaba Cloud service built on AMD's Radeon Pro GPU technology.

The main benefit to using AMD's chips to run Alibaba's Cloud is that it will boost graphic processing in its data centres, which will help Alibaba spread its influence around China and beyond. Alibaba Cloud currently hosts 35% of websites in China, but now it's hoping to increase that, as well as increasing its customers around the world.

“The partnership between AMD and Alibaba Cloud will bring both of our customers more diversified, cloud-based graphic processing solutions. It is our vision to work together with leading technology firms like AMD to empower businesses in every industry with cutting-edge technologies and computing capabilities,” said Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud.

Alibaba also hopes the tie-up will help it explore new cloud-powered areas, such as virtual reality applications and gaming, which demands high-powered processing power. This would, in turn, help AMD, which has recently released new technologies designed to help people create real-time photorealistic virtual reality content.

“The collaboration between AMD and Alibaba Cloud leverages the world-class technology and software engineering capabilities of both companies to meet the growing demand for standards-based GPU computing solutions capable of enabling more immersive and intuitive cloud services,” said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.

“Working closely with industry leaders like Alibaba Cloud helps ensure the investments AMD is making in our high-performance graphics and computing datacenter products continue to align with the needs of the broader cloud market.”